Observations focused on the problems of an underdeveloped country, Venezuela, with some serendipity about the world (orchids, techs, science, investments, politics) at large. A famous Venezuelan, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, referred to oil as the devil's excrement. For countries, easy wealth appears indeed to be the sure path to failure. Venezuela might be a clear example of that.

Posts Tagged ‘sebin’

Hugo Chavez has a mind of his own. He goes on TV and tells lies and stories just as if they were facts, sometimes lying about things a President should not even know about. Case in point is housing, Hugo needed housing built for his Mision Vivienda, in the absence of sufficient housing units built, he started making up numbers, claiming by the end of 2011 that 92% of the 150,000 promised housing units had been built. Experts do not even believe half of that was built as the program did not even begin until April.

But his ability to spew out high quality BS was clear when talking about the Miami consul Livia Acosta, who was expelled from the US after being taped by Spanish broadcaster Univision plotting with Cuban and Iranian buddies to cyber attack US nuclear power plants.

Chavez publicly confirmed the expulsion, but then went into imaginary overdrive, saying that Venezuelan intelligence sources new the action was coming and thus Mrs. Acosta left the US in Dec. 15th. and was already in Venezuela.

Except that…

Mrs. Acosta herself in a radio program said this week that she was in Miami on January 9th. when the expulsion order came through and immediately left the country, contradicting Chavez’ imaginary tale of Venezuelan intelligence being ahead of the game.

In fact, it appears that this was more of a problem of lack of communication within Chavez’ Government (Surprise, surprise!) Reportedly, the US Government had informed Foreign Minister Maduro of the upcoming broadcast and revelations to allow the Venezuelan Government to withdraw Acosta quietly. Except that Maduro not only decided not to remove her from her post, but failed to inform the boss.

Meanwhile Mrs. Acosta (shown above) is back in Caracas after her meteoric rise in Venezuela’s diplomatic circles. She went from being a member of Chavez’ Bolivarian Circles, to being trained as an intelligence office in Cuba, to being a member of Venezuela’s intelligence service SEBIN (where apparently anyone can check if they have your ID number if you are an employee of the country’s intelligence service!!) to Consul in Miami in eight years.